Chapter 7
Elena.
“Elena. You need to see this before you walk into that building.”
Nora’s voice was tight through the phone, tighter than I’d heard it in weeks, and I stopped halfway across the Medigenix lobby with my badge still hanging loose in my hand.
“See what?”
“Check the Ashford pack network. Right now.”
I ducked into a corner near the elevators and opened the app with my thumb shaking harder than I wanted to admit. The post sat right at the top, already climbing toward a thousand shares, posted anonymously under an account with no history and no face attached to it.
Luna Ashford Was Never Loyal, the caption read. Ask yourself why she really left. Ask yourself who she’s been seeing in Duskridge this whole time.
Beneath it sat a photograph, my own face pasted badly onto a body that wasn’t mine, standing far too close to a man I’d never seen before in my life, his hand resting on my waist in a moment that had never happened.
My stomach turned over so violently I had to press my palm flat against the wall to keep standing.
“It’s fake,” I said into the phone, my voice thinner than I intended. “Nora, that photo is completely fake.”
“I know that. You know that. Do you think anyone commenting on it cares?”
I scrolled, and the comments kept coming faster than I could read them, hundreds already, wolves I recognized from bonding ceremonies and pack dinners, all of them certain they’d known it all along.
Always thought she looked at him funny, one comment read.
Poor Alpha Ashford, another said, deserved better than a mate who couldn’t even wait for the ink to dry.
Gold digger, gold digger, gold digger, over and over, the word repeated so many times it stopped looking like a real word at all.
“Elena.” Nora’s voice pulled me back. “It’s not staying on the pack network. Someone screenshotted it and posted it to a human gossip forum an hour ago. It’s already got its own thread.”
“How is that even possible? How does something on a private pack app end up on a human forum in an hour?”
“Because gossip doesn’t respect borders, apparently, not anymore.” She exhaled hard on the other end. “I’m so sorry. I should have caught this before you saw it standing in a lobby.”
“I have to go, Nora. I have a meeting in ten minutes.”
“Elena, maybe call in sick. Just for today.”
“I can’t. Not after everything I’ve already given up.” I forced my spine straight, forced my face into something professional enough to survive an elevator ride. “I’ll call you tonight.”
I hung up and stared at my own reflection in the elevator doors, waiting for the numbers to climb, feeling every eye in that lobby land on me even though logically I knew most of them hadn’t seen a thing.
By the time I reached my desk, I understood I was wrong about that.
Two coworkers who usually stopped to chat walked past without a word, eyes flicking to their phones the second they saw me coming. A woman from the compliance team, someone I’d shared coffee with twice, angled her body away from me at the printer like proximity itself might be contagious.
“Morning,” I said to her, my voice steady even as my chest wasn’t.
“Morning.” She didn’t look up.
I sat at my desk and opened my email, and there it was already, a link forwarded from an internal address I didn’t recognize, no message attached, just the subject line: Have you seen this??
I closed the laptop harder than I meant to.
Camille appeared at my cubicle an hour later, her expression carefully neutral in the way I’d learned meant she was choosing every word with real care.
“I’ve heard some things are circulating,” she said quietly, glancing around before she spoke again. “I want you to know I don’t put much stock in anonymous posts.”
“Thank you. That means more than you know right now.”
“Not everyone here feels the same way, unfortunately.” Camille lowered her voice further. “Paula’s asked to see you. I don’t know exactly what it’s about, but I’d brace yourself.”
My stomach dropped for what felt like the tenth time that day.
I thought about Hollowmere, about how a single winking emoji from Ronan at a Ball had taken four days to reach me, private, personal, contained inside a bond only the two of us could feel. This post had taken less than an hour to travel from a pack network I’d left behind straight into the building where I was trying to rebuild an entire life from scratch.
A pack didn’t need borders to destroy someone. It only needed a phone and enough people willing to believe the worst of a woman they’d never actually met.
“When does Paula want to see me?” I asked, already reaching for my badge.
Camille’s face told me the answer before she said a single word.
“Now,” she said. “She’s waiting in her office right now.”